


Final Fantasy XIV Vignettes

by rincewitch



Series: FFXIV Roleplaying Works [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Allusions to abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Grief, The Calamity - Freeform, Trauma, and by 'mostly' i mean 'entirely', mostly self-indulgent stuff about OCs, the liberation of ala mhigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rincewitch/pseuds/rincewitch
Summary: various prose pieces, memes, prompt fills, etc. for ff14. mostly written 2017-2018.





	1. Rinh Panipahr: A Life in Five Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> a tumblr meme i started that never really took off, but i was still happy with the writing i did

**1\. Age 17 - The Black Shroud.** Life in the Shroud is a balancing act. You’ve got to live in the margins– close enough to the densest parts of the woods to find enough game to sustain the Panipahr family, but far from any settlements enough not to draw the attention of the Gridanians, to whom every Keeper of the Moon is little better than a poacher. A twig snaps. Is it a lost antelope? Or is it a Wood-Wailer on patrol? You pull your bow taut. The light of the lesser moon illuminates the Twelveswood.

**2\. Age 18 - Stonesthrow, Thanalan.** You’re here among people who lost their homes. Some of them lost their homes in the Calamity, like you. Some of them lost their homes over sixteen years ago, when Ala Mhigo fell. But they’re still here. You suspect you’ll still be here in sixteen years, too. Cooking fires smolder. Hushed conversation. You’ve lost everything but your son, but you’ll keep going as long as there’s hope for him.

**3\. Age 20 - The Coliseum, Ul’Dah.** Your lanista says it’s important to put on a show. To show the baying crowds you’ve got _heart._ So even though you were badly hurt in your last fight, even though the jagged cut left across your face still bleeds under the bandage, you step onto the blood sands with a flourish. Your opponent takes a step back. _Moonkissed_ , roars the crowd, _Moonkissed._

__

**4\. Age 21 - Summerford, La Noscea.** It’s your very first day on patrol as a soldier of the Maelstrom. You weren’t sure what to expect; what training you’ve had so far has taught you to be ready for anything. Pirate attacks, Sahagin raids, smugglers and thieves and ruffians. But today, at least, everything was peaceful. The sun was shining in La Noscea. You climb the hill at the Summerford Farms, that old Bearded Rock, and take a moment to gaze out at the spires and decks of Limsa Lominsa, and think how much all this suits you, in spite of everything.

**5\. Age 24 - Specula Imperatoris, Gyr Abania.** You’re charging up the ramp, the momentum of dozens of Maelstrom, Flame, and Ishgardian soldiers carrying you forward. The Eorzean alliance feels invincible in this moment, an irresistible force. In a few minutes, the Imperials will open fire on their own tower, burying Eorzean and Garlean alike in crumbling masonry and twisted steel. But, right now, nothing can stop you. You feel ready to charge to the very gates of the Royal Palace.


	2. Specter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017

There were ghosts that walked through stories all over the Shroud, spoken of in hushed tones around Gods’ Quiver campfires, adapted into theatrical spectacle at the Min Khetto Amphitheater, woven into the songs Keeper of the Moon mothers taught their daughters. Forlorn Gelmorran spirits condemned to wander half-collapsed tunnels deep in the Mun-Tuy Cellars, the shadows of Wood Wailers killed by women willing to trade everything for the ‘protection’ of King Poach, will o’ the wisps half-glimpsed through dense thickets.

But every Keeper of the Moon family has its own stories, too– this is an important thing to remember about Keepers. Every band of Keepers is a unique culture in and of itself, with its own traditions, folklore, legendary heroines, and, yes, its own ghosts.

So Rinh Panipahr grew up hearing about long-departed fermented-bean loving Gelmorrans, spectral lancers in hollow-eyed masks, and the lights you can see through the woods if you look for them just so. But her aunt Sizha also told her about the Panipahr family’s own ghosts.

Okhi Panipahr was a brash young huntress who lived– and died– over a century ago, caught between the sides in the Autumn War, killed in crossfire between Gridanians and Ala Mhigans. Her shade was said to walk between the Black Shroud and Gyr Abania eternally, determined to haunt all those who wronged her, always making sure to pass through her family’s ancestral hunting grounds on each leg of her neverending journey. If you lean an offering to her against a tree (a properly old tree; she only recognizes the ones that grew in her lifetime), she’ll bless you with the ability to move unseen through the woods when Gridanian patrols are near.

The Grey Coeurl stalked the fringes of the Shroud much more recently– mere decades ago; Rinh’s grandmother claimed she’d seen the beast with her own two eyes when it was still alive. It was hungry and desperate– the hunting out on the fringes of the wood was even more meager for an apex predator than it was for a small band of Miqo’te. It caught the scent of the then-matriarch of the Panipahrs– Miah Panipahr, Rinh’s great-grandmother, she reckoned. It chased her through the woods, for malms and malms, until it finally had her cornered. She murmured a prayer to Menphina, preparing herself to die, when all of a sudden the creature was struck down by an arrow– Miah’li Panipahr, a son of Miah’s who’d set out on his own just a few moons ago, had happened to be hunting in the area when he saw his mother being pursued by a giant coeurl. This much of the story was oral history, of course, but Sizha went on to explain how, on cold, misty days, a grey silhouette could occasionally be seen in the fog, protecting the tribe as it slumbered.

There were dozens of stories like this– spirits and shades of the departed that watched over the family, or warned them off from danger, or protected their territory from those who would do them harm. A Panipahr daughter who betrayed her family to join the Coeurlclaws, only to return in death to aid the family she betrayed. A Wood-Wailer who killed a teenage Paniphar boy and lived the rest of his days in guilt and regret, and who in death sought to make amends. House spirits that followed the Panipahrs’ distant ancestors when they pulled up stakes, took up a nomad’s life, and traveled to Eorzea from a far-off homeland.

Sizha had a scholarly bent, of course. She was a conjurer, a wise-woman, a voracious reader who made sure that even the humble camps of the Panipahr family were well-equipped with books, that even though her daughters and nieces’ whole world was a narrow portion of the Black Shroud that they about the rest of Hydaelen– histories and customs and literature from far-off settlements.

So when she told these ghost stories to Rinh, and her sisters, and her cousins, she said, “Keep in mind that, per a scholarly understanding of aetheric theory an the mechanics of the Lifestream, many of these stories are… dubious.” But then she’d smile her toothy Keeper smile, and say, “But they’re _our_ stories, and there’s a sort of truth in that, too.”

Now Aunt Sizha is gone, and with her most of the Panipahrs, and the territory they’d called home for centuries. Every tree that might have grown in Okhi Panipahr’s lifetime was ashes now, consumed by Bahamut’s rage. The paths Miah Panipahr ran down, clearing Miah’li’s arrow flew true across and into the eye of a Coeurl were unrecognizable, piles of rubble and dirt and jagged shards fallen from Dalamud.

* * *

Rinh wondered, sometimes, if these specters still walked through the ruins. Could the Grey Coeurl be seen in pacing between smoldering trees, wreathed in smoke? Did Okhi still walk the roads from Gridania to Ala Mhigo, looking for offerings that would never be left again? Were the Panipahr house spirits lost in the wreckage? Had these ghosts been joined by Aunt Sizha herself, and Rinh’s mother, and her sisters?

But she still told these stories to her son, anyway. These tales of woods-spirits and things half-glimpsed through branches on dark nights might not seem relevant to boy who grew up by the wide-open skies and endless seas of La Noscea. But they were _their_ stories, and there’s a sort of truth in that, too.”


	3. Synthetic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017

> _The outskirts of Castrum Abania, shortly after the fall of Specula Imperatoris to Alliance Forces_

It was a quiet night in the mountains of Gyr Abania. The lights of Specula Imperatoris were at Rinh’s back, brighter even than the stars.

She dismounted her chocobo (her ankle hurt a bit as it hit the ground; she’d been a bit banged up in the battle for Specula Imperatoris, but she was doing her best not to let it slow her down) and pulled a pair of field glasses out of her saddlebag. She peered down the Imperial road connecting Specula Imperatoris to Porta Praetoria. To the left of it, she saw Radiata as a constellation of flickering lantern-light and hearthfires. To the right, the ominous silhouette of Castrum Abania, the last obstacle between the Alliance frontlines and the Lochs.

She spent a few minutes in silence, watching patrols tramp up and down the Ironroad, clearly visible in glow of the ceruleum lamps lighting it.

_Amateur hour,_ thought Rinh, frowning, _All those lights will foul up their night vision._ Radiata, Castrum Abania, and Porta Praetoria were clearly in a state of ostentatiously heightened security, all spotlights and well-manned ramparts and frequent patrols, but Rinh– who’d spent so much of her life in the dark– wasn’t sure if any of them would be able to see anything that might be lurking in the shadows.

She took a map out of her pocket, marked her current location on it, and then began to make a few notes about the disposition of Garlean forces to bring back to the Alliance.

A loud bang shattered the silence.

Rinh stepped back, startled. There was a bullet hole right through her map.

Her shield was up in an instant, her cutlass out an instant later. She saw her assailant clear as night, silhouetted against the stars– a Garlean centurion, gunblade pointed at her.

She’d been on campaign in Gyr Abania for months by this point. She had a pretty good idea of what to do when faced with an opponent armed with a gunblade– close the distance. Then, it’s a sword fight instead of a gunfight. And Rinh Panipahr was very good at swordfighting.

The centurion fired again as Rinh charged forward, a blur of red fabric and glittering steel, but she hardly had time to line up her shot, which whistled past Rinh’s ear before pinging against a rock. An instant later, Rinh was upon her; her shield knocked the centurion’s blade out of her grasp, and her cutlass was pointed at her heart.

“Yield,” Rinh said. The centurion stared at her; what expression lurked beneath the impassive features of her helmet Rinh couldn’t say.

The centurion backstepped, towards her fallen weapon.

“Don’t,” Rinh said, taking a step forward.

The centurion took another half-step back before suddenly shoulder-charging towards Rinh, which was more or less the only possibility Rinh wasn’t expecting. She managed to hold onto her shield, but her cutlass fell out of her hand, clattering onto the dusty ground.

The two officers hit the dirt. Rinh tried to grab the fabric of the centurion’s sleeve in her hand, but it didn’t have the sort of give she expected it to. It was made of some sort of synthetic material that was slick and treacherous to the touch.

Rinh reflected, for a moment, on just how different Garlean lives were than hers. Even the basic _stuff_ that their world was made out of was unrecognizable, man-made, synthetic. Iron roads, cold ceruleum lights, artificial textiles. The sounds and textures of everyday life were unrecognizable. She wondered what the centurion saw out of the magitek lenses of her helmet; it was probably different than the view offered by the hand-ground lenses of Rinh’s field glasses.

Rinh’s reverie was broken when the centurion punched her in the face.

“Seven _hells,”_ Rinh grunted. She kicked, instinctively, blindly, but Nymeia was on her side– the tip of her boot found the centurion’s stomach, and she scrambled backwards, winded.

Rinh had momentum, and she had a shield, so knocking the centurion down after that was a simple matter.

“ _Do you yield?”_ asked Rinh, “Last chance.”

The centurion, weakly, put up one hand.

It was a long walk back to Specula Imperatoris.


	4. The Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017

> _Shortly after the liberation of Ala Mhigo_

More or less the first thing Rinh did after coming back to La Noscea was pay her respects at the Mark of Nymeia.

She still venerated Menhphina, of course. Rinh was never, ever one to turn her back on her roots. The Lover still lit up the night sky even after her Hound came crashing down to earth; she still shone over ranshackle refugee camps, whitewashed stone spires, endless seas and dusty battlefields. She was still beautiful. She was as beautiful hanging in the sky over the flaming battlements of Castrum Occidens and filtered through the smoke of Rinh’s artillery battery as she was half-glimpsed through the boughs of the Black Shroud’s ancient trees.

Nymeia, though, had been first in Rinh’s heart ever since the Calamity.

This puzzled some– especially in Gyr Abania, where, to be fair, the King of Ruin blackened the good name of Nymeia by setting her against her husband, her servant, her companion Rhalgr. Rinh was an able diplomat, and knew the history of the place. She knew that ostentatious displays of devotion to the Spinner were impolitic. But still, occasionally, when a bullet whistled through the sleeve of her coat without hurting her, when the stroke of an imperial blade glanced off her shield– even if she was wounded quite badly, but still breathing, still able to limp off the battlefield– she murmured a prayer of thanks to Nymeia. If her Resistance comrades overheard her, they might raise an eyebrow, more curious than offended.

But even those who knew Rinh quite well were sometimes puzzled by her devotions. It seemed un-Keeperlike, for one thing. But, more importantly, why would she venerate the goddess of fate when Rinh’s faced so much tragedy, endured so many calamities, survived so much pain?

“Because I faced it,” she said, “Because I endured. Because I _survived_.”

For all the world’s cruelties, Nymeia had seen fit to weave a future for Rinh, for Rinh’a. What could that mean other than divine compassion?


	5. Self-Editing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017
> 
> and hey, it's a story about a different character this time!

> _The townhouse of Lady Takahashi no Shina, in a fashionable district of Kugane, four or five years ago_

_It is delightful to hear stories of far-off places. A great many sorts of people pass through– Ijin traders, unsavory characters who ply the Ruby Sea, travelers from Doma, or those who hail from places still more colorful and exotic. To sit in a tea-house or hostelry and listen to those who come and go can be as amusing as a performance at the Mujikoza._

I set down my brush, and read over the lines I had jotted down. I frowned in dissatisfaction; my calligraphy was lovely, but the content felt vacuous. I was fairly certain I had written more or less the same thing already in a prior collection of writings, and better phrased.

A waste of good paper! A reputation for wit and originality can be quite burdensome; one is expected to fill page after page with sparkling insight, and one’s pride prevents one from simply filling the space with nonsense.

I tried again.

_People who travel widely are delightful to speak to. To hear a strange country described movingly, to glimpse it through another’s eyes, is_

I set my brush down again and stood up to find a fresh sheet of paper.

I have always agonized over my writing, even if I have strove to cultivate the opposite image. I have, at many points in the past, labored endlessly over a poem not more than a few lines in length, wasting reams of paper and a sea of ink, before dashing off a new copy in flowing, loose handwriting, as if I’ve jotted it down off the top of my head after rolling out of bed.

The lady to whom one of these poems was dedicated, delighted to have received it in the morning after I spent the night, wrote back, _How wonderful it is to have a lover who always has a poem on the tip of her tongue._

When one is praised only for their cleverness, it is a short leap to assume that one’s worthiness in general is defined by the ability to perform it well.

I unrolled a fresh sheet of paper, and began to write again.

_A storyteller from the Azim Steppes visited court one day. He spoke movingly of his homeland, of the various peoples that inhabit it, of its bleak natural beauty. My fellow ladies-in-waiting and I fell hushed; witticisms, allusions, and other conversation felt unnecessary. I had never heard the room so quiet as when_

I trailed off, elegant characters ending in an unsightly ink splotch. I frowned. I chewed the end of my brush; an uncouth habit only resorted to when alone. I was describing a true incident, and one which had stuck with me for a long time. I remember that old Xaela, all scars and sinew, telling stories of reincarnated warrior queens, games of Kharaqiq that changed the destiny of whole tribes and redrew the map of the steppes, scattered peoples linked only by certain secret signs. He had a deep, booming voice; it must have been heart-stopping when he was younger, when that voice was shouting war-cries across the plains, audible over the thunder of hooves.

But simply summarizing his words didn’t capture the true sense of the encounter, or the lasting significance I ascribed to it. His stories were only part of it.

The rest of it was the vision the Echo granted me.

I crumbled up the blotted paper, giving it up for lost, and began to write on a fresh sheet.

_Things seen only in Echo:_

_A thousand hooves pounding on grass. The way a triumphant khatun’s eyes glitter. Herds of karakul gently drifting like clouds across the sky. The glint of the sun on the cutting-edge of the raised scimitar about to end a Nadaam. A horizon you could drown in._

This was more satisfactory as a piece of writing, I feel, but there is something strange about writing about things seen only in the Echo. Even if one is forthright about their origins, it strikes me– perhaps not rationally– as parasitic. You are writing about the world as seen through another’s eyes, but you’ve not done the work generally required to do so.

It was then that I first realized that my career as a chronicler of the refined Kugane gentry and the rarefied world around the highest echelons of the bakufu had rapidly run its course.

I realized that if the best thing I could think to write about were the experiences of those who had seen more of the world than I had, the only course of action that lay before me was to leave Kugane myself, to see more of the world, to walk through places I only knew in stories.

To have an _experience._


	6. Prank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017
> 
> annnd back to rinh

Newly-minted Second Lieutenant Rinh Panipahr paced in front of the squadron of privates she had– for less than a day, granted– been entrusted with responsibility over.

She’d been extensively briefed on the disposition of Maelstrom forces at Camp Skull Valley, the guard details assigned to the tidegates, Sahagin war doctrine, the altered geography of the ruins of Halfstone, and even about the architectural qualities of the various Limsan defensive structures, upon which might hinge the difference between a successful defense of Western La Noscea and a breach in the walls.

She felt she’d done, more or less, everything she could to prepare for her first command as a fully-commissioned officer of the Maelstrom.

But there was one thing she hadn’t quite reckoned on: the actual privates in her detail.

She looked over her men and women– three Seekers of the Sun and a Sea Wolf who dwarfed all of them, and Rinh.

They were trying very hard not to laugh.

Rinh looked at Sports– Sports, her poor, sweet, chocobo, who’d done nothing but loyally carry his rider from place to place for several moons now.

She looked back at the privates. She’d wanted so very badly to be taken _seriously_.

Sports ruffled his feathers unhappily.

“What, exactly, have you done to my bird?” she asked, quietly.

“That’s no way to talk about ‘is ‘oliness,” said R’thahki, one of the privates.

Rinh felt that she really ought to write R’thaki up for _something_ , but all she could do was stand there and smile; she couldn’t help herself. It was hard enough not to laugh.

Rinh’s reputation as a stickler for rules, regulations, and proper procedure would follow her for years to come, but she still knew that sometimes she ought to let things be, let things slide.

Everyone in her detail had been at Camp Skull Valley much longer than she had, but as she’d spent more time deployed there, she got to know the mix of the boredom of day after uneventful day passing mixed with the stress that at any moment hundreds of Sahagin might suddenly hove over the horizon and turn your friends into pincushions.

There was something to be said for allowing the occasional moment of levity in conditions like that. Rinh was never very good at it, but she knew how important it was.


	7. Identification

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017

> _A year or two after the Calamity_

“You’re a good fighter, Panipahr,” said Eadwulf, “You’ve got good reflexes, you’re a hell of a lot tougher than you look, you’re quick, and you’ve got a fine instinct of when to go in for the kill. You’ve a knack for picking up new weapons– a real quick learner. And you’re in good shape. You’ve got a great body.” The old lanista puffed on his cigar. “You’ve got potential, Panipahr. All the makings of a crowd-pleasing gladiator. But…”

Rinh raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She’d learned very soon after being chosen for Eadwulf’s stable of gladiators that her input was seldom appreciated when the lanista went off on a tear like this.

“ _But,”_ said Eadwulf, “Seven hells, Rinh, what you haven’t learned yet is how to actually _please a crowd_. Fighting’s only half the battle. Ha ha, so to speak.”

Rinh regarded him with no expression on her face.

“We’re entertainers, first and foremost.” Eadwulf still used _we_ and _us_ to refer to gladiators, even though he hadn’t had to bleed for Ul’dah in years, even if a wide gulf separated a successful lanista to the trainees vying for his attention. “This is fundamentally a showcase of martial skill, but you’ve also got to give ‘em a show. All those people up in the stands– they want excitement, and drama, and colorful personalities and twists and _adventure._ They don’t want a fucking _fencing_ _lesson_.” He circled Rinh, looking her up and down; there was a sort of hunger in his eyes Rinh didn’t much like the look of.

“Bet you haven’t even thought of a stage name,” said Eadwulf, disdainfully, “Literally every gladiator’s ever had at least _that_ much to set ‘em apart, and you’ve probably never even given a second thought to it. But you need a lot more than that if you’re going to make it. You’ll need a whole… a whole stage _persona!”_

Rinh stood silently, waiting for him to continue.

“Say goodbye to Rinh Panipahr, that sullen little shadow from Stonesthrow,” Eadwulf said, “and let’s figure out who we’re gonna put out there instead.” His eyes swept up and down Rinh’s body again, before settling on her face. “Not many Keepers in these parts. We can use that much; you’ve got those eyes, those _fangs–_ sort of an exotic, half-wild look that says ‘all my friends growing up were trees’.”

Rinh bristled at this, and scowled.

“But you’re _definitely_ easy the eyes, and we can use that too. A petite little thing that can still swing a sword and take a beating and– if you _do your job_ – look appealing while doing so. So. So you need a persona that hits both those notes, and then suddenly you’re a story the people here can get _behind_.”

“ _Moonkissed,”_ said Eadwulf, finally, “That’ll do it.”

Rinh hated it. But she had a family to feed. It was this or back to Stonesthrow.

So she just nodded.

* * *

> _Much Later_

Rinh’s duties frequently put her in contact with Ul’dahns– diplomatic missions, joint operations with the Immortal Flames, jurisdictional imbroglios. She figured she was mostly unrecognizable now; her red coat and shako spoke louder than scars on a familiar face.

Every so often, someone gave her a second look, as if thinking– _is that–? no, it can’t be._

And sometimes someone still calls her _Moonkissed._


	8. Linkpearl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for FFxivWrite2017

> _After the fall of Castrum Abania_

“It’s gonna be over soon. We’re close now. So close we can see the Ala Mhigo from our camp.”

Rinh hesitated a moment, before adding, “Mommy’s gonna be home soon.”

She wasn’t sure if she ought to say that; for all she knew, she might not come home at all. Rinh, like a lot of the Alliance forces serving in Gyr Abania, had taken the Resistance motto to heart: _Liberty or Death._

She took the death part seriously. If, after everything, the fate Nymeia spun for her was to lay down her life for her Grand Company, for Eorzea, for a nation whose brothers and sisters let bleed for decades while doing nothing, she would face it resolutely.

“What’s the city look like?” said Rinh’a, his voice small and oddly soft coming from the linkpearl in his mother’s ear.

“Oh, it’s still grand,” murmured Rinh, smiling, “There’s spires and statues and lights and huge promenade; it’s as beautiful as it was in all the stories I’d heard back in Stonesthrow…”

Rinh reckoned Rinh’a was old enough to know a lot of the facts of the war. His earliest memories were of refugee camps in Thanalan, so of course he’d grown up with some notion of Ala Mhigo. But he knew why the Maelstrom was there; he knew that the Garleans had stolen what belonged to the Ala Mhigans. Rinh explained, as best she could, about how she was going to fight in a war to help the Ala Mhigans get their home back. A war for liberty.

But liberty’s only half the slogan, and she’d flinched from the _death_ part. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her son that there was a significant statistical probability she’d wind up dead in a ditch somewhere.

But she had a linkpearl– one personal linkpearl among many official ones; linkpearls for going up the chain of command, for going down the chain of command, for coordinating with Resistance leaders, for running logistics, for reporting imperial movements to distant detachments.

But the linkpearl connected to her son’s meant that, every night, she could talk to him a little while.

She might very well die out here. She’d made peace with that.

But she could stay a part of her son’s life until the very end if she does.

“Rinh’a,” she said, “Can you hear the rain?”


	9. assorted ask memes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes my replies to tumblr ask mems turned into a whole little ficlets; here they are in one place, edited and cleaned up a bit for ao3

> _what sorts of things might remind your muse of those close to them? any scents, objects, sounds?_

The Panipahr family, as a rule, see deep connections between spaces and the people who occupy them. It was easy to see how many of the family’s ghosts lived on in the woods when the woods had shaped generation after generation of the family. Associating family members with landmarks came naturally to Rinh– the living (here is the tree Aunt Sizha climbed to get away from the wood-wailers twenty years ago), the absent (here is the thicket Rinh led a toddling Vash’a into on a six year old’s idea of an adventure), and the dead (here is the rock where we leave offerings to Okhi).

Almost all of these landmarks were obliterated by the calamity.

But there’s more to a land than its landmarks– the Black Shroud the Panipahrs lived in was scents and sounds and textures. Lay your bare hand on the gnarled bark of an old tree, and Aunt Sizha’s still there. Hear the sound of vilekin skittering away in alarm as you push through the underbrush, and memories of misadventures with Vash’a before he and his father left for Madain Sari come flooding back. The birds that used to alight from Okhi’s stone still call to one another in the canopies.

And as she saw more and more of the world, and met more and more people, she continued forming associations like that. Rinh’a Panipahr is wind blowing off the ocean and an endless sunny sky. The men and women she commanded in Operation Archon (the living, the absent, the dead) are the scarred countryside between Wineport and Agelyss Wise. Ojene Suinuet is the steel wall of a liberated castrum draped with Maelstrom flags. Jack Crooktail is water and shade running through the parched dust of Ala Mhigo.

> _Bad memories/experiences_

_In general, I consider the Echo a gift; a blessing from the very star which sustains our earthly existence to better perceive the fine details of her beauties and converse freely with her peoples. But, sometimes, when something very bad has happened, the Echo is just that: an echo of a past experience, reverberating back and forth, indefinitely._

_When the imperial guns opened fire on Specula Imperatoris, I was fortunate enough to be deployed elsewhere; what was a terrifying and awesome disaster to the men and women caught amidst the falling rubble was little more than the distant thunder of artillery and, eventually, a column of smoke on the horizon._

_But the experience was indelibly branded on its victims, and, in the coming weeks, amidst my comrades in the Alliance and the Resistance marked by this event, Hydaelyn granted me vision after vision of the tower tumbling down and panicked thoughts racing through the minds of terrified soldiers, again and again, from every angle imaginable._

\- Kō Hyōjōsho, AKA Takahashi no Shina; excerpt from _Diary of the Western Front of the War on Garlemald_

> _Things they’ll never admit_

_I still wonder if I made the right decision coming out here– being physically absent from my family, from_ you, _for the sake of ensuring that you grow up in a brighter world– and that other children all over the world who have also lost so much to the Empire have the same chance to begin again deliverance to La Noscea afforded us._

_No, phrasing it as mulling over the correctness of a decision isn’t right. The truth of it is that I’m_ scared _in a way I feel extremely reluctant to talk about. Not just scared in the immediate and obvious sense that constantly being shot at and threatened with grievous bodily harm at the hands of the enemy puts one, understandably, on edge. It’s something deeper– the fear that I shall never see you again. The fear that, after you’ve lost so much, the choices I’ve made meant that, in the end, you lost your mother, too._

_I suppose that, if you’re reading this, that fear will have turned out to be entirely justified. I’m sorry._

-part of letter to Rinh’a left in Rinh’s coat pocket in Ala Mhigo, to be sent in the event Rinh was killed in action. The letter was returned to Rinh after she gave her coat to Ojene Suinuet as a makeshift baby blanket. Rinh burned it, unopened and unread by anyone save herself.

> _People who’ve influenced them greatly_

_My mother, who taught me that the tenacious work of survival is worth it. My Aunt Sizha, at whose side I learned how to care for the vulnerable, to heal, to nurture– and, most importantly of all, the value of_ knowing _things, from ghost stories to grand histories to a smattering of herbal remedies and Shroud witchcraft and wise woman’s lore._

_Eadwulf, my lanista in my gladiator days, was influential on me in the sense that a forest fire is influential on an old growth forest. I wish he hadn’t been. I wish he wasn’t still there, beside, a burning, angry presence every time my instincts guide me in a sword fight, with every trained reaction to a cut, thrust, or parry, every subtle shift in footwork upon which life and death depend. I wish… I wish…_

_In Gyr Abania, I often looked to the example of Ojene Suinuet for guidance. To an extent this was simply the result of the fact that I was being groomed to step in and assume some portion of her responsibilities when she was obliged to leave the front for some time, but also… it takes a particular courage to plant your feet on the soil of a foreign country and declare– them, too. I’ll fight and die for them as if they were my own._

_I don’t know her motivations, not really, but it was still an example to aspire to._

> _grudges and vendettas_

Rinh:

_I’m still bitter about the Wood-Wailers in particular and, by extension, the authorities of settled Gridanians in general. After I escaped from the Shroud, and then from the privations I was subjected to in Ul’dah because those with power in my native land turned me away in a time of need, I became an officer of the Eorzean Alliance. The Twin Adders were my comrades-in-arms, and I felt extremely uncharitable and guilty for still being wary around them. They bled for Ala Mhigo alongside the rest of us, after all._

_But now the war is over, and I’ve passed through the Shroud on personal business a few times. I might be a distinguished redcoat officer and not a scabby-kneeded teenage Keeper with a bow and arrow, but the Wailers still scrutinize me from behind their wooden masks as coldly as they did in my youth. They’ll never change, not really._

Shina:

_I crouched in the trench as shells burst overhead, their report echoing up and down the canyon. Under ordinary circumstances, even in the field I strive to maintain a neat personal appearance; just because we are at war does not mean we must forsake being_ civilized _about it._

_Our situation now, however, was desperate. I was clad in the same dusty fatigues the Ala Mhigan Resistance cell I was attached to wore. I hadn’t had a bath in what felt like a week. The only thing adorning my face was smeared soot and mud. All that set me apart from my comrades was the sword at my hip and the shape of my horns; even my white scales were obscured by a thick layer of dust._

_And so the whole world seemed collapsed down into a bare handful of features– a ditch in an Ala Mhigan valley, a few figures wearing shapeless khaki seeking refuge within it, and an imperial battery some yalms distant, keeping us pinned in place, constantly threatening to overwhelm us._

_One would think that such a situation would leave me entirely preoccupied. Yet in the terrifying monotony of a protracted battle, my mind continually wandered._

_I kept on thinking of a gentlewoman I had known, years ago, in the court of the bugyo of Kugane; one Lady Akazome, a fellow lady-in-waiting to the magistrate’s wife. When I read a poem to the gathered courtiers, she smiled attentively along with the others there gathered, and agreed with the magistrate’s wife’s praise of my work to my face._

_Yet in her diary, subsequently published to great (and entirely undeserved) acclaim, she lambasted me; accusingw me of being overly pleased with my own writing, and interested simply in showing off with work that was pure artifice with little to say behind it._

_Nearly a decade later, in the suffocating dust of a distant foreign land, with Garlemald’s magitek artillery casting a deathly shadow, I sat in a ditch, and thought about what a shame it would be to die there and leave Lady Akazome’s charges unanswered. How hateful that would have been! How disagreeable!_

\- Kō Hyōjōsho, AKA Takahashi no Shina; excerpt from _Diary of the Western Front of the War on Garlemald_


End file.
